Life, death and longevity in Tonga

To be at home in Tonga you need to tear up your diary and forget your schedules. Like it or not, going with the flow is the only option. I booked just a few days in Tonga because I really had only one specific task to do. I should have known better. Just before I left Samoa I had news of the sad death of the wife of the General Secretary of the Tongan Church. As Tevita was really the person I was coming to see, that was a blow. Now that I'm here, the funeral of Sela has dominated everything. It's a privilege to be with people in this situation - you just have to trust that this is more important than your own plans. 

Faka Me

Sunday morning I was back at my old college, Sia'atoutai, where I taught in '79,80 & 81. I'm welcomed as a long-lost relative - Diane and I were married in the college chapel and made our first home on the campus. There are a couple of my old students on the staff. I was preaching (in place of Tevita ) at the annual children's service, always held on the first Sunday in May. Children are dressed in white and take most of the service, reciting the scripture readings and hymns. It's one of the big events of the year - everyone wants their children to look gorgeous. At the feast afterwards  several speeches praised the simplicity of my sermon, which made me wonder if I had been disappointingly simplistic. I'd tried to speak of the way children teach us about God. The feast, by the way, included a first taste of the freshly-harvested yams, I impressed people (I like to think) by successfully identifying them as the ufi kahokaho variety. 

 

Monday I had been due to teach at the college. However, the students had been up most of the night cooking food for the coming funeral, so were too sleepy. I had a day off, getting some writing done, having a haircut (by a young Chinese man called David) and reacquainting myself with Nuku'alofa's best coffee shop, Cafe Escape. Sai'a, who's looking after me, says he's grateful I'm showing him some of the good places to eat in town as he hasn't had chance too find them yet. In the evening I ate spaghetti con frutti di mare in Little Italy, a lovely Italian restaurant by the shore. 

Tuesday morning saw me joining the crowds at Centenary Church for the funeral. I couldn't really take photos, so I've used a picture from the web to give an impression. I'll try and paint the scene. The church (and it's a big one) is packed. Everyone is in black and wearing a ta'ovala, the woven mat that signals respect. There are special versions for funerals, including some that almost cover a person. This is for those who are tu'a to the deceased - socially inferior according to the complicated family structure. Unusually, the King, queen and princess Royal are all present. I found myself on the front row with Kini, wife of the church president. The students of Sia'atoutai were there in force (as well as General Secretary of the church Tevita is also Prncipal of the college) and so were the brass bands from various Methodist schools. Sela's body lay on a pile of tapa cloth and mats, covered in a white cloth but not in a coffin. The funeral itself was a mixture of church service and complex Tongan tradition, with every task carefully allocated to the appropriate relative. My old principal, Lopeti Taufa, still dignified at 89, offered the opening prayer. Other dignitaries led the hymns and readings. 'Ahio, the president preached for about an hour. The adopted children of Sela, both from Fiji, spoke. They only looked about 12 and were amazingly brave. From the Church the body was borne to the cemetery, accompanied by bands playing Abide with me. The grave had been built as a cement tomb and the body, wrapped in a mat, was lowered in. and covered with sand. After the prayers and the formal thanks we  were all invited to take a flower and drop it into the grave and then were given a hymn book in memory of Sela. When it was all over the mood lightened. I was approached by a group of women who had been teachers with Diane at Queen Salote College. Now they are senior ministers - Tonga being more advanced in the area of gender equality than 

Samoa. 

 

I spent the afternoon with Lopeti, simply delighted to have one more chance to meet him. His daughters were our bridesmaids and he and his late wife Mele acted like parents to us while we were at Sia'atoutai. Lopeti still does some teaching, he's part of a team working on a new translation of the Old Testament, and he's promoting a tree- planting scheme for the outer islands. Pretty good for a 89 year-old! 

 

Goodbye Samoa

3.30 am Saturday I said goodbye to Piula College and set off for the airport. I'm very glad I came. Samoa is a beautiful country with a proud sense of culture and a stable social structure. It feels very safe. There was no lock on the house I stayed in. By comparison Everyone in Fiji is very concerned about security - especially in the city. 

Hospitality was overwhelming. Thursday evening was my last night eating with my 'aiga (pronounced ayinga). Each tutor has responsibility for a group of married and single students. They have a large communal cooking, eating and meeting house. Children and dogs mill around. They  kept telling me how much they enjoyed having me as it meant they were cooking better meals than usual. It made me aware that I was using valuable resources, so I did pass on a donation for their funds. I wondered how some of them had coped. One of the student's wives had been brought up in New Zealand, hadn't known much Samoan and had had to fit into the demands of a very strict way of life. She said she wept every night for the first month, but was happy now. 

 My 'aiga

Friday night the faculty had a farewell feast for me and for Viliami, the educational consultant from Fiji. Formality was the order of the day. Everything, from the kava ceremony beforehand, through the seating arrangements (separate tables for guests of honour, the principal, tutors, prncipal's wife and tutors' wives) to the speeches and presentation of gifts. I suspect that protocol in the Prussian court of the nineteenth century was casual by comparison. Of course, you feel totally out of your depth when you don't know the conventions. My little gift to the principal seemed puny in comparison with the heap of souvenirs and lava lava cloths piled up in front of me by a line of dancing women. I would have needed several extra cases to bring them with me, so could only take a sample and leave the rest to be recycled through the gift- giving system. 

 The end of the 5.00 am prayer meeting, complete with sleeping children!

All of this traditional culture is combined with an impressive programme of academic development. Piula probably leads the way among national theological colleges in the region. It has staff members who are completing PhDs overseas, so the faculty is being strengthened all the time. 

 From the end of WW1 until independence Samoa was annexed to New Zealand. That means it has been relatively easy for Samoans to stay and work in New Zealand. I wonder, long-term, how people - including the students at Piula - will cope with being split between two cultures.

I flew first back to Nadi in Fiji (transport between Pacific countries is expensive and rarely straightforward) then had a 5 hour wait for a flight to Tonga. Ah, Tonga! In some ways it's very different from when I first arrived in January 1979. Horses and carts (and bikes) are replaced by cars, mobile phones are universal, ATM machines dispense cash, new concrete and glass offices and stores have sprung up. Yet I suspect that John Henry Newman's description of the Catholic Church also applies to Tonga: it changes in order to stay the same. Building and development schemes come and go, but there's a strong sense of inertia compared to the energy in Fiji. Compared with the orderliness, beauty and communal pride in Samoan villages, There's a makeshift quality about Tongan settlements. Perhaps that's because so many families around Nuk'alofa have come from elsewhere in Tonga.

I was met by Taliai from Sia'atoutai and Sai'a from the Church Office. Sai'a is a young minister who has recently returned to Tonga after 20 years on New Zealand and He is charged with looking after me. He took me to my room at the Tungi Colonnade - part of a commercial complex owned by the church in the centre of Nuku'alofa - still being built last time I was here. Then we went for a meal at the Billfish down by the fish wharfs at Ma'ufanga - something of a Tongan jewel. I had eaten there my last night in Tonga 4 years ago. They still do great fish dishes. 

More on Tonga in the next post. 

The cruel sea

Thursday started slowly. Just as well as I was a bit delicate following a minor bout of food poisoning yesterday. My next door neighbour Lousaline had it too - we suspect the raw fish in coconut cream at Tuesday night's faculty dinner, an otherwise wonderful evening by the shore with men around the tanoa (kava bowl). I was due to be taken on a sightseeing trip at 8.30  but a problem with the college minibus (someone thought a spare wheel would be a good idea, given the terrain we were due to cover) meant we didn't set off till nearly midday. With Titimeia driving we headed for the hills - the lush, rainforest that covers most of the interior of Upolu. Tall tree ferns started to replace coconut palms, then majestic hardwood trees with vivid creepers. Streams, rivers and waterfalls dot the landscape and we passed a hydro- electric dam. It's sparsely populated, but there are villages, and even occasional cattle and sheep farms. 

 Looking down a waterfall in the rain forest. 

 Eventually, the road took us downhill again till we joined the south coast. The villages are closer together here, and many of them have family and village- run holiday resorts. These tend to be simple huts on the edge of the beach with a toilet block and snack bar. We stopped for lunch at one of them. It's difficult to believe, but this idyllic spot, a delightful beach resort on a strand of golden sand, was the centre of a life and death struggle when, in September 2009, a massive tsunami was triggered by an offshore earthquake and powered into the southern shore of Upolu. The tsunami struck in the early hours of the morning when most people were asleep. Around 100 were swept away to their deaths while many others were injured and traumatised. Some villages and resorts have had to be completely rebuilt, some places have been abandoned and the government has encouraged people (though with only limited success) to move further inland, away from danger. I've been reading a dissertation Titmeia wrote (it's been published) bringing together the story of Noah's flood with theological reflection on the Tsunami. He includes some harrowing accounts of the night and its aftermath. 

 

In the West we tend to assume that the world is under our control. Here in Oceania, everyone is aware that we don't control our environment; the world is beautiful but fragile and unpredictable. The unpredictability has always been there and everyone accepts it. What is much more difficult to accept is the way that humanity has so carelessly abused the planet that life gets more difficult for islanders by the year. Sea levels rise so that areas become less and less habitable. The sea temperature rises (particularly in this, an El Niño year), coral reefs start to die off and fish stocks begin to disappear from the accessible inshore waters. Weather patterns become more inconsistent and so crops are harder to grow. No wonder ther are now more Samoans overseas than on the islands - often dismissed as 'economic migrants' in the countries they move to.  Mosese, the Principal, is quite vehement about what is happening, and rightly so. If nothing else, this trio has brought home the reality and the cost of climate change. It's too late to stop it happening, but we have to look for ways of limiting its extent and helping those who are its victims. And, of course, it's chastening to realise that we're all - myself included - responsible. 

A View from the Boundary

Arrived back at campus this afternoon to find a game of Samoan cricket in full swing. I'd read about it so was delighted to don my Panama hat and take one of the chairs on the boundary.

  This is a very different game to the one played at Lords. For a start, the number of players seems to be flexible and can - apparently .- be anything up to 20. Then there's the bats. They look like a cross between a baseball bat and a traditional Polynesian war club - a three-sided block of wood designed for hitting the living daylights out of a ball. There are traditional wickets, but bowling is a ball from one end followed by a ball from another. Batting is vigorous rather than subtle - not much sign of a Geoffrey Boycott forward defensive push here. What you see here is a game between the Reds and the greens - as shown by their lava lavas. It was played with great seriousness, with scorers announcing each run by megaphone. No fours or sixes; you only get 1 for crossing the boundary and 2 if you sail over it. Hit the accommodation block and you're out, apparently! The team waiting to bat kept up their spirits with rhythmic chanting.  Couldn't really follow what was going on, but at the end it seemed that the greens had won the Piula cricket shield. 

I wonder what the TMS team would make of it? 

 

Here comes the sun, da da da da .....

Actually, it's gone again now - replaced by pouring rain - but for a day and a half we had tropical sunshine, and even a couple of sunsets. Monday I wss taken on a field trip to Manono, a small island between the two main ones in the archipelago. There was Titimeio, my host in the aiga - extended family - Toulei, a native of the island and Losaline, the Tongan teacher who's here from Sia'atoutai on the Pacific Methodist exchange scheme. Depressingly, she only started Queen Salote college the year after Diane and I left. She's been bringing me up to date on the Tongan gossip.  We left the rest of the college sorting out the mess left by cyclone Amos. As we drove along we could the remains of trees that had been cleared away and some banana plantations flattened, but little damage to buildings, fortunately. 

Manono is a 20 minute boat ride from the end of this island, with Aluminium catamarans powered by 40 hp Toyota outboards the standard inter-island transport. Once on the island we were taken to Toulei's family Fale fono , the main meeting house for the village. Morning tea consisted of cans of orangade and plates of Pringles. Then It was off on a two- hour circumnavigation of the island. Manono has no cars (no dogs and - so it's claimed - no mosquitos either) but there's a footpath round the island linking the villages. There's a total population of about 800, with 2 Methodist, 3 LMS and 1 Catholic Churches. One or two simple holiday resorts. - it would be a great place to get away from it all. This has been a pivotal place in Samoan history. At one time the centre for warfare, but then the base for LMS and Methodist missionaries. Several of them are buried here. The walk in the mid-day heat was pretty tiring, so conversation was a lot quieter on the way home. We did stop for some excellent ice cream as we came through Apia.

  

This week there's also been teaching - a 2 hour session on Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection on Tuesday and a seminar on modern trinitarian theology yesterday. The last was quite a challenge. For some reason they have a syllabus that requires them to look at a number of German theologians - a tough proposition, even for Germans! Students have starting sidling up to, asking for help in projects they are doing. Sometimes I can help, sometimes I have to send them off to find a genuine subject specialist - 'no, I can't help you with your essay on Nehemiah, that's what Old Tstament lecturers are for'. We have a Fijian educational consultant at the college this week, here to help the staff with learning outcomes, assessment criteria, etc - all the parephenalia of contemporary academia. 

Amos comes and goes

I'm sitting on the porch of my little house and - believe it or not - the sun in shining! It's very warm, humid and calm. And the scene looks different from yesterday in other ways, too. last night we had a visitation - we were on the edge of cyclone Amos' path through the islands. The usually immaculate grounds of Piula look distinctly bedraggled: palm fronds all over the place, branches, a few trees. And most buildings have been partly boarded up. As the wind speed started to ratchet up last night, the principal (whose task I didn't't envy) directed a group of students to nail roofing iron or ply wood against the most vulnerable Windows. Mine were done between 11 and midnight as I lay in bed. I was anxious that the boys might be caught outside with debris blowing around, but they retired to safety. For a few hours the wind howled and screamed but when I woke at 4.00 all was calm again. The power's been off since 11 last night - which is to be expected.it would be good to have it restored soon - especially for the fridge. This post going live will be a signal that the power is back on. Everyone is astonished that we've had a cyclone so late in April. It brings home the fact that while climate change may hardly be noticeable in Belfast, here in the Pacific it's having all kinds of effects. 

I was preaching at the 8.00 am college service this morning and, yes, in spite of an interrupted and rather scary night, everyone was there in their best white  outfits. No power meant no keyboard, but the singing was full-on and very disciplined. The service  was followed by a very formal brunch with the staff - once again, more food than I can cope with. No repeat of yesterday's toasted sandwiches with tinned spaghetti and spam - for which I was grateful. 

Before the 3.00pm service (they just keep coming - rather like the meals here) I went down to the beautiful cave pool to cool off. You can s win about 20 metres into the cave, right underneath the chapel. The water is clear and deep with a shoal of fishes. You then reach a solid wall, but I'm told you can dive under it to come out at another pool a little further along. So far I've not felt a need to try that! 

I was due to give lectures tomorrow on the church in the Middle Ages (no, I'm not sure why, either) but the principal has declared Monday a clean up the college day, so no teaching till Tuesday. 

In other news, I am sharing my house with a number of fellow-creatures- it's inevitable in the tropics. The wooden parts of the house have little piles of sawdust, which indicate some unseen burrowing and chewing. Anything edible left out for more than a minute or two attracts thousands of tiny ants - something you have to get used to. Gecko lizards dart about the walls - welcome residents who help to keep the mosquitos down. However, I do draw the line at cohabiting with a bunch of marauding, 3 inch cockroaches, so when I was in town the other day I got hold of a pack of cockroach baits and scattered them about the house. They seem to be doing the business, which means that I now have to dispose of the corpses. 

Update: the power came on At 5.00 but not the college wifi, so I guess this post will have to wait till tomorrow morning when someone resets it. Worse news is that the college cattle farm, which is a little way in land, has been badly damaged by Amos, so most students will have to work there tomorrow. I'm being taken to a small island. - Samoa's answer to Viwa - where the early missionaries had their base. I'll hope to get this off before I go. 

O God, thou bottomless abyss!

Harsh critics of this blog might point out that, although it's called 'Theologian on the move', there's a lot more travelogue than theolog about it. Perhaps it's time to remedy that. 

It was 5.15 am in the coffee bar of Nausori airport. Winston Halapua suddenly asked my why I thought John Wesley had a written a hymn beginning with the line, 'O God, thou bottomless abyss'. It was a typical Winston question - four years ago he quizzed me about the Cappadocian Fathers during 

our early morning walK around Suva. Winston has written about moana - a Polynesian word for the ocean - as a way of understanding how God, the world and humanity are connected. He likes to point out that for islanders the ocean isn't so much the barrier that seperates us from one another as the thing that connects us to each other. Remember my blog about John Hunt on Viwa? He was there because he could get quickly out to sea to visit mission stations on other islands. 

Three days later I'm very conscious of the ocean; the muted roar of its waves have become a reassuring background to the day. The Pacific stretches beyond the horizon, and on for thousands of miles. And, of course, it's deep. Not quite bottomless, perhaps, but  with trenches that could swallow Everest without any bother. 

It turns out that Wesley's hymn was actually a translation from the German (the original is by Ernst Lange, a pietist) and first published in 1737 as part of a collection in Georgia during Wesley's unsuccessful missionary service in America. I  wonder if it was introduced to Wesley by the Moravians he encountered on his rough crossing of the Atlantic. Famously, these pietist Christians sang and prayed with confidence while the rest of the ship's company was in panic,  so Wesley may have been picking up a (for him) new way of understanding God through the experience of a safely-completed voyage. Here's how it begins:

O God, thou bottomless abyss,

Thee to perfection who can know?

O height immense, what words suffice

Thy countless attributes to show?

Unfathomable depths thou art

I plunge me in thy mercy's sea

Void of true wisdom is my heart

With love embrace and cover me

(Full text: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/hymnlyrics2/pdf/o_god,_thou_bottomless_abyss-ernst_lange.pdf)

The hymn goes on to use the metaphor of the ocean to explore the immensity, power and unknowability of God, as well as God's benevolent provision and all-encompassing love. 

It's an interesting contrast to the way the sea is often depicted in the Bible. The people of Israel were landlubbers, and tended to see the sea as a threatening, chaotic force always in danger of overwhelming the order of creation. Noah's flood, Jonah in the fish's belly and so on. But in a context - like the Pacific islands - where the ocean is the ever-present reality and the source of so much provision - the sea can be seen in a more positive light. I'm reminded that sometimes we can only do justice to the' big picture' message of the Bible by using different language, or using language differently. It's what we call contextual hermeneutics in the trade.

So 'Oh God, thou bottomless abyss' is a thought that keeps coming  to mind in my temporary home by the shore. But today there's a reminder that the ocean can't be taken for granted. It has forces beyond our control. A new cyclone (Amos - the alphabet has started again after Zena) is bearing down on us. Already the intense rain is pouring down (forcing the cancellation of the Women's fellowship BBQ) and there's a warning of strong winds and tidal surges to come. And that, too, gives theologians pause for thought.